Sunday, August 26, 2012

For the last few months, I have been
transcribing the obituaries that my paternal grandmother, Mamie Olive
(Martindale) Spurlock, had saved in her scrapbook. This last obituary puzzled
me. All the other obituaries were for immediate family, but I couldn’t identify
this person—Margaret H. (Lashly) Roberts. So off I went to research her and see
what I could find.

My first search was for a death certificate
on FamilySearch; success! I found that Margaret was born 25
December 1896 in Missouri, the daughter of [—?—] Lashley and Sarah Robinson,
and that she died on 26 November 1957 in Houston, Harris County, Texas, where
she had lived for 30 years. Her mother’s maiden name of Robinson rang a bell
because I knew that A.B. Martindale (my great-grandfather) had been married to
Zilla Robinson prior to his marriage to my great-grandmother Sarah Belle
Forshee.

I next searched Missouri marriages on
FamilySearch to see if I could find her parents’ marriage. I found a Sarah J.
Robinson who married James J. Lashley on 2 December 1882 in Iron, Missouri (an
area where my Martindale and Forshee ancestors had lived).

I turned next to the federal census. I found
Maggie Lashly (born Dec 1896 in Missouri) living with her mother Sarah (widowed,
born April 1860 in Missouri) and the siblings named in her obituary in Concord,
Washington County, Missouri, on the 1900 census. I then found Sarah Robinson,
age 20, in the 1880 census living with her parents Wm. (born about 1838 in
Missouri) and Margareth (born about 1840 in Tennessee) in Concord, Washington
County, Missouri. Sarah (age 2/12) was listed in the 1860 census in Concord,
Washington County, in the household of Thomas W. and Margaret Robinson.

Back to Missouri marriage records! Thomas W.
Robinson married Margaret Forshee on 2 April 1857 in Washington County,
Missouri. Margaret was the sister of my great-grandmother Sarah Belle Forshee.

Voila! This obituary was for a relative like
all the others in the scrapbook. Margaret Lashly Roberts was the first cousin
once removed of my grandmother.

1)
What year was one of your great-grandfathers born? Divide this number by
50 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette
number."

2)
Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find
the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an
"ahnentafel"). Who is that person, and what are his/her vital
information?

3)
Tell us three facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the
"roulette number."

4)
Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook status or a
Google Stream post, or as a comment on this blog post.

5)
If you do not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then
spin the wheel again - pick a great-grandmother, a grandparent, a parent, a
favorite aunt or cousin, yourself, or even your children!

Ahnentafel Roulette is one of my favorite activites, and I actually wrote a post yesterday. However, after posting, I realized my brain wasn’t functioning properly (blame it on the coming
Blue Moon!) and my division skills were severely impaired. So I’m trying again
today!

My great-grandfather John F.
Spurlock was born in 1850 (at least according to my research); divided by 50 is
37. I don’t currently have a person with the number 37 in my ahnentafel report.
So I chose the next person, #38, Hugh Hammontree, one of my paternal 3rd
great-grandfathers.

Hugh Hammontree was born about 1802,
probably in Blount County, Tennessee. He died about 1866 and is buried in an
unmarked grave in Arcadia Cemetery, in Arcadia, Bienville Parish, Louisiana.

Three facts about Hugh:

1.He married Rachel Caskey, probably in the early 1820s
in Tennessee.

2.Hugh and Rachel are believed to have had nine children,
but only seven have been identified by name: Sherreldia Jane (my 2nd
great-grandmother), John A., Sarah Anne, Rachel Elizabeth, Mary Delilah,
Lucinda Adeline, and Hugh A.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

One of my goals for
2012 is to use the Surname Saturday blogging prompt as a way to assure that I
spend some time researching each of my family lines and that I have appropriate
source citations for
the genealogical facts related to my ancestors. I’ve decided to use my
ahnentafel report and work back through the generations starting with my
grandparents, writing a summary of each ancestor. If you discovered this post
through a search engine and find one of your ancestors listed here, please
leave a comment to let me know.

My maternal 2nd great-grandmother Catherine
Sitterly was born 13 May 1813 in Guilderland, Albany County, New York.[1]
She was the sixth child of Jurry Hendrick “George” and Deborah (Hogeboom)
Sitterly.

On 24 June 1834, Catherine married Andrew Yawman in
Schenectady, Albany County, New York.[2]
The couple had eight known children:

Sunday, August 19, 2012

This week Randy Seaver, of Genea-Musings, issued a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge in which we look at how "complete" our genealogy. Here is the challenge:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (and I hope
more of you do than participated in the SNGF Genealympics the last three
weeks), is to:

1) Determine how
complete your genealogy research is. For
background, read Crista Cowan's post Family History All Done? What’s YourNumber? For comparison purposes, keep
the list to 10 generations with you as the first person.

2) Create a table
similar to Crista's second table, and fill it in however you can (you could
create an Ahnentafel (Ancestor Name) list and count the number in each
generation, or use some other method).
Tell us how you calculated the numbers.

3) Show us your
table, and calculate your "Ancestral Name Number" - what is your
percentage of known names to possible names (1,023 for 10 generations).

4) For extra
credit (or more SNGF), do more generations and add them to your chart.

5) Post your
table, and your "Ancestral Name Number," on your own blog, in a
comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status or Google+ Stream post.

It’s always interesting to look at the results of one’s
research results statistically so this was fun for me!

I already had a 10-generation ahnentafel report compiled by
my genealogy software program saved in a pdf file. I hand-counted the number of
individuals in each generation; the numbers include ancestors for which I have
only a first name or a surname. Here are the results:

Generation

Relationship

# Possible

# Known

Percentage

1

You

1

1

100.0%

2

Parents

2

2

100.0%

3

Grandparents

4

4

100.0%

4

Great-grandparents

8

8

100.0%

5

2nd
Great-grandparents

16

16

100.0%

6

3rd
Great-grandparents

32

20

62.5%

7

4th
Great-grandparents

64

30

46.9%

8

5th
Great-grandparents

128

22

17.2%

9

6th
Great-grandparents

256

22

8.6%

10

7th
Great-grandparents

512

24

4.7%

Summary

1023

149

14.6%

Less than 15% identified!

Although I have identified all 16 of my 3rd
great-grandparents (the 5th generation), my numbers start dropping
dramatically in the sixth generation. Part of the reason for this is I have
been unable to identify many paternal ancestors (my “southern” line). A couple
of my maternal lines, however, stretch back to the earliest days of Colonial
America.

I can see that I have plenty to keep me occupied researching
right here in the U.S. Someday maybe I’ll get to the point where I can cross
the pond!

Walter Ivan Martindale, my grand-uncle and son of Ambrose B. and Sarah (Forshee) Martindale, was born 17 September 1883. On 4 Aug 1903, he married Snowdie Chambers in Nacogdoches County, Texas. He died 2 April 1958 in Houston, Harris County, Texas.

“W. I. Martindale

W. I. Martindale, father and grandfather of three Houston law enforcement officers, died today in Houston hospital after an extended illness.

Mr. Martindale, 74, had two sons, A. C. Martindale, a former Houston police captain, who is an investigator for the Harris County Medical Examiner, and Don H. Martindale, who is bailiff for the Harris County grand jury. His grandson, A. C. Martindale Jr. is a patrolman with the Houston Police Department.

Born in Ironsdale, Mo., Mr. Martindale worked in the saw mills of Louisiana, Missouri and East Texas before coming to Houston in 1917.

He was an employe of the maintenance department of the Southern Pacific Lines from 1919 till his retirement in 1946.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

The 2012 Genealympics are coming to a close today. In this post, I’ll
report on my final events and recap my medal count! Rather than re-post the
event descriptions, I just included a link to the blog post in which it was
described.

For some time, I’ve been using different techniques to go
back and find events that have no source citations. For this challenge, I ran a
report in my genealogy software to show all direct-line ancestors that were
missing source citations for any one of the following facts: name, birth,
death, or marriage.

Using that report, I was able to write proper source
citations for 134 events!

My grand-aunt Maude Alberti Martindale, daughter of Ambrose B. and Sarah (Forshee) Martindale, was born 12 November 1881 in Missouri and married Richard Albert Thompson on 29 April 1900. She died 24 December 1958 in Missouri.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

One of my goals for
2012 is to use the Surname Saturday blogging prompt as a way to assure that I
spend some time researching each of my family lines and that I have appropriate
source citations for the genealogical facts related to my ancestors. I’ve
decided to use my ahnentafel report and work back through the generations
starting with my grandparents, writing a summary of each ancestor. If you
discovered this post through a search engine and find one of your ancestors
listed here, please leave a comment to let me know.

My maternal 2nd great-grandfather Andrew Yawman
was born 29 March 1810 in Schmittviller in the Alsace Lorraine region of France. His
parents were Philip and Magdalena (Hoffman) Jamann.[1]

On 24 June 1834, Andrew married Catherine Sitterly in
Schenectady, Albany County, New York.[2]
The couple had eight known children:

Andrew is my most recent immigrant ancestor having arrived
in New York with his parents and brothers in 1832.[18]
His parents died in the cholera epidemic that year.

Andrew appeared on the 1835 New York state census in Schenectady,
Schenectady County, New York,[19]
but by the 1840 U.S. Census had moved west to Rochester, Monroe County, New York.[20]

In 1842, he became a naturalized citizen of the United
States of America. The Yawman family considered themselves German; but when
Andrew naturalized he had to renounce his allegiance to the King of France.[21]
At the time of his naturalization, Alsace-Lorraine was under French control.

By 1857, Andrew and his family had moved even further west –
to Saint Paul, in Ramsey County, Minnesota.[22]
They were in Minnesota for the 1860 census,[23]
but by 1863 were in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois.[24]
Based on information from Chicago city directories, it appears that Andrew’s
residence and business were in the path of the Great Fire.[25] I
wrote about the possible impact of the fire on the Yawman’s in a previous
blog post. It appears the family moved back to Minnesota shortly after the
fire as Andrew is not found in the Chicago city directories after 1871.

Andrew took advantage of the U.S. Homestead Act to acquire 155
acres of land in Pipestone County, Minnesota, the patent on the land being
granted on 31 May 1884.[26]
However, he did not stay long in Minnesota, moving to Denison, Grayson County,
Texas, by 1887.[27]

The census records indicate that Andrew was engaged in
business as a milliner during his time in Rochester and in Saint Paul;
daughters Kate, Apalonia, and Rebecca all worked as milliners as well. During the
time Andrew was in Chicago, he worked as a watchman for a railroad,[28] as
a salesman for his son-in-law Lee M. Phillips,[29]
and as a clerk for daughter Rebecca’s grocery business.[30] The
only time he was enumerated as a farmer was in Pipestone County, Minnesota, in
1880.

Andrew died on 24 December 1891 and is buried at Oakwood
Cemetery in Denison, Grayson County, Texas.[31] A
transcription and image of his obituary from the Dallas Morning News can be found here.

Over the years, I have accumulated quite a lot of
information about Andrew Yawman’s life, but there is more that I would like to
find and learn:

I need to obtain records for Andrew’s birth or baptism and
his marriage to Catherine Sitterly; likely these will be found in church
records.

I have not been able to locate documentation of Andrew’s
arrival in the United States with his parents and brothers.

I’d like to have more information and understanding of why
Andrew moved so much, and I’m curious as to why he went to Minnesota, then back
to Chicago, and to Minnesota again.

One of my cousins has done a great deal of research on the
Yawman family; perhaps I can get more information from him.